


Public Speaking

by etherati



Category: Watchmen
Genre: Clothing Kink, Dan's List of Kinks, Established Relationship, Graphic Sex, M/M, One Shot, Pre-GN, Pre-Roche, Semipublic Sex, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-29
Updated: 2010-03-29
Packaged: 2017-10-08 10:10:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etherati/pseuds/etherati
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The public face and the private face and all the places where they shouldn't overlap but still do. AKA, the one with the tuxedos and the bathroom sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Public Speaking

**Author's Note:**

> Kinkmeme prompt: Fancy party/restaurant with them both dressed up, and sex in a bathroom stall while they're there. I think I've mangled the prompt a bit but the core element is there!

*

“We can’t,” Dan manages on an exhale, the consonants barely formed. “Anyone could come in here… nggg.” Wide eyes flutter shut behind wider lenses, mouth hung open around a sound that won’t come. He’s shimmied as far down against the cool plane of the door as he can manage without wrenching his arms out of socket and it still isn’t enough, isn’t enough contact and it’s _killing_ him.

Walter – he’s Walter tonight, that was part of the bargain – grips Dan’s hips harder, thumbnails digging into the insides of his thighs. His shoulders roll solidly under Dan’s knees. “Forced me to come to this indulgent farce, hnh. Rich men with fat wives, wallowing in decadence. Asking _inappropriate questions_.” He twists his hips, driving into Dan with something close to viciousness but not quite, never quite. “Forced me to wear a _bowtie_,” he adds with another fast, brutal thrust, and the indignation is so childish that Dan could laugh if he had any breath to spare, if it wasn’t chopped and short and carrying all the sharp, tiny noises he knows he shouldn’t be making.

“…could come in here and hear us, see us,” Dan tries again, but the protest sounds weak even to his own ears, hips rolling to pull Walter deeper on every stroke.

“No one knows who I am,” Walter grits out, too lightly casual for the fact that he’s all but fucking Dan right through the stall door, sweat-slicked wood slats washboarding over the curve of his spine while the door rattles, rattles in its frame with every thrust. “Just a name, just someone you brought to the party. Not my reputation on the line.”

Dan groans, head rolling back helplessly; the heat rocking up inside him is heavy and unrelenting, burning with friction where it’s pushing muscle too far too fast and where the complimentary hand soap doesn’t quite do its job, and sweat is pooling around his collar and he just knows he’s going to come all over his shirtfront and _how is he going to clean up in time for his speech_ and –

A corner of Walter’s mouth just barely quirks up. “Shouldn’t have been such a teasing whore,” he says, breath hot against Dan’s shirt, teeth catching a nipple right through the fabric and biting down, hard.

It’s all Dan can do not to scream.

*  
*

He’d called it a surprise but really it’d been an ambush, the brand new tux carefully selected to compliment his own but not match it like a bookend – that would just be strange – laid out neatly on the bed. Distaste for the accouterments of the wasteful upper class aside, he knew there’d be no way Rorschach could resist running his fingers over the silk of the lapel, the fine stitchwork at the seams. Professional admiration he'd called it, with a defensive grump, but he'd been willing to try it on, to see what the sharp lines would do to his tight, compact frame, what kind of illusion it would weave. It didn't hurt that disguises were things they were both familiar with.

"What's it for?" he asked then, voice and eyes both full of suspicion, of a distrust that almost broke Dan's heart. These things were for other kinds of people, he insisted, for people who moved in different circles, who traveled with their feet never touching the ground from one decadent gathering to another, simpering insincere flatteries with the same natural rhythm that most real people drew breath.

Dan laughed; leaned over Rorschach's shoulders to admire the view in the mirror. "It's not always that bad, come on."

In the reflection, eyebrows knitted. "Usually worse when you're evasive."

"It's just a fundraiser," Dan said, "for the New York Ornithological Society." A local population of songbirds upstate a bit, in danger of losing their habitat. He had a speech to give, horrifying the prospect might be, and they'd given him two free invitations in exchange. "It’s a night we’d already been planning to take a break – wouldn't it be nice if–"

Eyes in the mirror, still accusing. "Have taken your cousin to these events in the past."

"Look," Dan said, arms settling heavily around Rorschach's shoulders, chest, the lapel silk clean and smooth against his bare arms. "You're the one I _should_ be taking to these things. Can't we just... just once?"

Be normal, just once. Walk in there together and be introduced by their real names and stand together by the buffet table and just talk, and no of course they couldn't say it out loud but it didn't matter, he didn't care. He just wanted to feel...

A long silence, then a short nod under the weight of his arms, an acquiescence.

Dan smiles, huge and full of affection, and hell, all he really needs is a scrubbing and the tux and maybe a nice bowtie, and he'll fit in fine. It'll be just fine...

Later, he will wonder how he could have been so delusional.

*  
*

Walter’s strong but even this is a stretch, so Dan’s having to take some of his own weight himself, hands clamped to the top of the high door behind him – and that’s why he can’t move his fucking _arms_, why he can’t reach for his own neglected erection, straining and aching against the open air, unless he wants to let go and send them both sliding to the floor. He’s got a good grip, it doesn’t hurt, but the situation still leaves him squirming and twisting to try to get some friction against Walter’s stomach, heat seeking heat, seeking flesh and touch. Walter stays infuriatingly out of reach as he rocks, and the next sound Dan makes sounds too much like a sob.

“No touching,” Walter grumbles, leaning close to breathe the words over his throat, into his ear. He resettles his grip on Dan’s ass, hitching him up a little higher to change the angle and when he pushes in again it's suddenly slow and deliberate and Dan can feel the entire wet slide of it, is shaking and shivering – can just about see stars, brilliant against the black. “Neither of us. Fine this way.”

"Fucking easy for you to say," Dan mumbles, eyes pressing closed.

"Hn," is the only reply, but Walter stops moving, pulled halfway out, just stays _still_ and it's terrible and cruel and Dan whimpers blind entreaties that aren't quite cohering, don't quite make sense. He knows better by now than to say _please_ out loud, but he can still try to rock up against him, try to get the contact he needs–

"Ask politely," Walter says, hands tightening to still him in place, but his own voice is wavering and he's not as in control of this as he's pretending to be. Dan can tell it's only through monumental force of will that he isn't falling forward to bury himself again, to take what's _his_ in this tiny, private space between everyday discretion and cold nighttime distance. The impulse is there in his eyes, hungry and brutal. "Good at that. To make up for... gn. For filthy language."

Dan resettles his hands on the back of the door, finds enough presence of mind to grin crookedly; he knows a bluff when he sees one. "You really want to play this game?" he asks, bearing down and tightening around Walter's cock, looking up at him through sweat-dampened whorls of hair, eyes blown and black.

The bowtie's hanging unfastened and loose around Walter's collar; the very trailing end of it skates over the bared skin above Dan's hips, silk cool and setting fire to every nerve it touches. Walter grimaces down at him, bites his lip hard to keep his hips from bucking into that painful, irresistible tightness.

"You think you can–"

"Shut up, Daniel," he finally grits out, voice broken and stuttery and on the verge of a very personal defeat.

*  
*

It wasn't hard to convince him to shave, but the haircut was accepted only under extreme duress. It wasn't much more than a trim, smoothing out the straggling bits so that it would look like he _hadn't_ been cutting it himself with kitchen scissors for the past ten years, but you'd never know it to see the hate-filled, baleful looks he was leveling at the glass every time he passed a mirror. All said and done though, there were people in the world who cleaned up well and Rorschach wasn't really one of them.

He introduced him as Walter Kovacs, didn't specify friend, coworker, distant cousin – let the assumptions hang. A few eyebrows raised scandalously but, thankfully, Walter was too absorbed in his miserable bowtie to notice.

-

"I wish you'd told me, Danny," a female voice said, and god, it was Mary Eisler, wife of the University's zoology department head, one of his mother's old friends. She was smiling loosely over what was likely her fifth glass of champagne. "I would have stopped trying to set you up with my nieces."

"Uhm," he fumbled. "Well, I mean–"

"I do have some nephews too, you know," she continued, giggling in that way that only the young and the old could pull off. "That might have been better than letting you fend for yourself."

Dan stopped mid-sip, lowered the glass. _She's drunk, _ he reminded himself patiently, and an old family friend on top of it. He still couldn't stop himself from asking, utterly deadpan, "What do you mean by that?"

She seemed to pause to think, nursing at the edge of her glass. "Well, I mean– he's not quite–"

"What?"

"You can't have much in common," she finally settled on, in that tone of civility people use when they're trying to say a terribly impolite thing, politely.

Dan ground his teeth, willed himself to swallow the sip he'd taken of his drink. To not say anything because if he opened his mouth at _all_–

"Daniel," said a voice at his shoulder, and Walter was back from the buffet table and he was antsy and annoyed but thank god he hadn't squirreled away any of the food in his pockets for later, or–

Dan closed his eyes - took a breath, and a second to berate himself. Smiled as well as he could in farewell as he took Walter by the shoulder and lead him away.

-

He didn't mean for them to keep getting separated, but it seemed like every time he turned around Walter had vanished, and he had to go hunt him down, rescue him from situations that were becoming increasingly uncomfortable. Rorschach's eloquence disappeared with the persona, he'd noticed that before, and Dan had no doubt that he was falling all over himself in response to questions that likely had nothing to do with birds _or_ fundraising. Embarrassing himself, or them both, and all he'd wanted was a normal night out here, but he could tell that every rescue left Walter a little less openly grateful and a little more on edge, a little closer to just leaving his bowtie in the punchbowl and bolting.

"It's okay," Dan said, soothing the words in with hands on either shoulder after a particularly harrowing encounter.

Walter didn't seem to agree. "Horrible people," he said, arms crossed, fingernails digging into the fine linen sleeves of the coat. "Invasive, entitled, presumptuous..."

"Just until after my talk, okay?" Dan reached to refill his glass; the thought had always been enough to make him scrabble for something to take the edge off his nerves. "Then we can go home."

-

"You look good in that," he said, and he wasn't sure where it was coming from, this sudden urge to say exactly what was on his mind. It might have had something to do with the stifling atmosphere, the conformist pressure, the need all night to discipline his words, the looming presentation. It might have had something to do with the view he currently had of Walter's ass, the jacket of the tux hiked up where he was leaning on a table edge. "Really... good."

"_Daniel_," Walter hissed, still holding the glass Dan had put in his hand at the beginning of this, the level of alcohol in it no lower.

Dan laughed. "What? Not allowed to give a compliment? Or say how much it makes me want to-"

Walter elbowed him in the ribs, hard. "Inappropriate, Daniel. Drunk?"

Wincing and rubbing his side, Dan set the glass aside. "No, I'm not. That's only my second glass. I'm just tired of..." He trailed off, reaching up to run fingers down across the nape of Walter's neck. He could feel the gooseflesh the contact raised, the faint shiver under the skin.

"Daniel," Walter said again, warning. It was obvious his patience had about hit its limits, that he was a second away from punching Dan or anyone else that came too close square in the face.

A long pause, shuffled feet and carefully examined ceiling tiles, Walter fumbling something in his pocket.

"God dammit," Dan finally said, voice pitched to a frustrated, explosive whisper, leaning in close. "If you wearing that thing makes me want to peel it off of you with my goddamned teeth, I'm allowed to say tha–"

The rest was chopped off when the tie around his neck suddenly went taut, cutting off breath, and he could hear a low, rolling grumble as he was dragged away, out into the hallway and further, further. The sound had a violence to it, rising and falling in a complaining cadence, but Dan suddenly got the distinct impression that he'd misinterpreted entirely; that punching Dan was not at all what Walter had in mind.

"God, Ror– Walter," he attempted, throat tight under the twisted strap of his bowtie. "What that hell are you–"

"Can't stand it," Walter growled. "Bad enough they were asking ... impertinent questions, making me _think_ of things, without you making it _worse_."

At the end of the hall then, and the door to the public mens' room opened with a bang, and thank god – there was nobody in there.

*  
*

"Well, you know," Dan breathes, shifting against the door. "If you're not going to _do_ anything, I may as well get down–"

And just like that, he's won the battle; Walter rocks into him, fast and unforgiving, pinning him hard against the wood slats and denying any chance of the threatened escape. Resumes his previous pace, grunting short, tight breaths with the exertion, fury etched into his features at having lost but it's hard for him to hold onto, fracturing and falling away with every creak of the door in its frame.

The back of Dan's head hits the paneling again; rolls from side to side in renewed frustration but there's a burn now, hot in his fingers and toes and he's gotten so close that if Walter stops again or if he hears that goddamned door open, some drunken old academic stumbling in to lose his load of champagne or putter around at the sinks, he'll – well, he doesn't know _what_ he'll do but he certainly won't fucking well _stop_.

"Actually afraid of getting caught?" Walter asks, breathy, shifting his half of Dan's weight to one side, freeing a hand to finally wrap around the base of his cock, wring up along it until it's pressed flat against his own stomach, palm hot against the head. The wetness there slicks his fingers when he strokes down again, rough and sliding and tight.

There'll be fingernail marks in the door's finish before this is over, and Dan screws his eyes shut, twisting up into that grip. "...aah. God. No, I'm not."

"Really?"

A bubbling, broken laugh, all he can manage in the space between far less articulate noises; he drives himself up onto the next thrust with a violence that surprises them both, spasming in the narrow space between door and flesh, coming hard against Walter's stomach before he even knows what's happening.

In the dizzy, humming aftermath, he keeps his grip on the door, stays clenched tight around Walter until he finishes – his own composure forfeited, sweaty forehead pressed to the door next to Dan's face.

-

("Really?" he hears again, but it could just be an echo, his ears playing tricks on him, along with the sudden slam of a door and something coming from Walter that sounds, inexplicably, like laughter.)

-

"Yeah, Really," Dan finally says from the floor where he's collapsed, legs and arms both like jelly. Walter isn't doing too much better, slid down onto his heels, bracing himself on the far wall. "You think I didn't know they'd figure it out the second we walked into the place?"

Walter just stares, some vague flicker of curiosity visible under the lethargy of endorphin overload.

Dan leans in, presses his mouth to the skin just below Walter's ear. "I'm not ashamed of you, buddy."

"Hehn," Walter almost-laughs. "Regardless. Almost nine o'clock."

"...shit."

*

The view from the podium is often frightening, especially when he knows his tuxedo jacket is rumpled unacceptably, that his hair isn't neatly in place, that he's only had a handful of minutes to mentally switch gears into this professional landscape. But it's easier somehow, looking out over the room, when there's a truly familiar face in the audience – looking right at him, smirking slightly through his own disarray and somehow the most stunning person in the entire hall no matter how raw and rough the set of his face, how common these people think he is.

He opens his mouth and the words come easily, uncoiling like silk, and the applause is remarkable but he doesn't hear it – and when he's congratulated later on what a wonderful speech it'd been he will be able to truthfully say that Walter's help with it had been tremendous, that he could not have done without it.

*


End file.
